Summer 2011

In the Piazza Santa Croce, during San Giovanni. I think this is when Sisi developed her fear for firworks. We walked all the way from home and as we walked we searched for a spot to see the fireworks. It was near imossible and very uncomforable being pushed around by the crowd, finally by the time we got to Santa Croce we decided to head back home and noticed that the bleachers were still up from the local rugby games. It ended up being a perfect spot to watch the fireworks!

Sisi in the sidecar with Gimmy's friend Carlo

San Gimignano

Our friend Dylan came back for another visit in Italy, one of the trips we did was visit San Gimignano

A cute little Piazza with a chuch

The towers of San Giminano

Roof top dinner at La Scaletta

The amazing view from the top

Venezia

View of Piazza San Marco, the Duomo and the Palazzo from the water

The duomo

Venecian traffic ;)

Little Sisi in Venice

Sisi and Gimmy taking a swim on the lido of Venice

Waiting for our cafe at the Florian in Piazza San Marco

On the farie boat

Summer in Pizzo

First day at the beach, Sisi and cousin Mario playing in the sand

Taking a walk from our house to Pizzo

Mini Jane Fonda

Sisi and me, at the best beach for finding sea glass, and also for private swimming since it takes a little effort to get there.

Playing in the waves

Gimmy's nephew, Bernardo, turns 20!

Daniela with Mario and Sisi and me at the beach

Yeah SISI!

Swimming

The family at the beach for a morning swim

Sisi and me, in our crocheted bikini's I made for us

Learning to swim with floaties

The jelly!

My 25th birthday party, opening presents

The family

Sisi, Andrea, and Mario being silly

Cutting the birthday cake

My crazy family and friends

More swiming

Raphaelle holding the ricola (the big fish) and Sisi being very scared of it. ( HAHA, poor thing!)

The 3rd ( and last) black berry pie of the season.

Daniela preparing 4 lasagnas for the mid summer party

Claudio and Gimmy preparing apetizers for the mid summer party

Sisi and Gaia playing with bubble shooters

Badolato
We took a short trip to Badolato to visit Gimmy's friend who spends time  at the beach there in the summer.

Caminia

Gimmy swimming in the beautiful waters of Calabria

Taking a boat ride with friends Claire and Alan and their cute little boy to a fun swimming place.

Gimmy and Alan with Sisi in the floatie

Sisi and Mario

Last swim of the season

Collodi

Collodi, the author of Pinocchio birth town in the hills in Tuscany

Playing with puppies

Taking a walk from Massa to Cozzile. Two very small and cute towns situated on top of the hills

It was still quite hot when we returned to Florence so a friend of ours gave us this baby swimming  pool for Sisi to play in. She obviously thought it was super fun! 

Sardegna Climbing Easter Break 2011

Sardegna Climbing

We were a group of 10 climbing friends from Florence that planned to go to Sardegna for a climbing trip. From the start of the trip we noticed the weather was not going to be in our favor. We checked out reports on several websites with hope of some promissing weather conditions for climbing... As it turned out, after we drive to the farie, take the boat ride over to the island, drive another 2/3 hours and arrive at the campsite,  half of the group ended up going back home because of the bad weather. But as the 5 of us stayed we basically made our motto "lets make the best of what we have". 

This was the very first day when we still had everyone from the group. We hiked a little along the coast to a beautiful stop right on the sea. We met other climbers from all over Europe, all determined to make the best of their "Easter Break". 

The spot was fantastic and I loved being there even if the rocks were wet and slippery.

Thats me, in this moment telling my friend where its most slippery and where the water is coming  from.

Getting ready to climb

View of the sea from where we are climbing. 

Since we had succumbed to the idea that it would be difficult to climb in the rain every day we decided to do some touring around also and in between get out our climbing gear whenever possible. One alternative activity we did was hike into a canyon where there were very large boulders and amazing scenery. 

We also did a tour of a grotta. Which was fun and interesing. Gimmy and I had visisted a grotta in Tuscany so this was interesting to compare to what I got to see there. We were not allowed to take photos, but we managed to get at least one ;) This is from the top looking down into the cave.

As we were driving around in the rain we noticed the area we were in was known for  having ancient ruins. This is one of the ruins we visited. No one knows who made these but they are similar in architecture to the Etruscan style in which they used huge rocks but as far as I could understand its still a mistery.

This is the last place we were able to climb. We tried to climb it one other time during the trip but there was too much rain  so we left and hoped we would get back to try it out. This was another, obviously, very beautiful climbing spot right on the sea, and its basically a canyon with bolted walls for about a mile in. We climbing the morning of the day we had to leave and it turned out to be the best climbing we had while we were there. We found a wall that just so happened to be positioned where it was dry from the rain and even dry from the mist of the sea... That is until a huge dark cloud came over and down poured while our friend was finishing up the very last climb of the trip. We all thought that was a funny way to end to our "Sardegna Climbing Vacation".